There’s no place like home for math education

Re:There’s no place like home for math education by barkingllama on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @01:05PM (#2411720)

This is a story about Tory and the leaky canoe. Tory loves rowing her canoe in the pond (while wearing a certified floatation device and carrying the proper safety whistle, of course), and she rows at least 2 hours a day. Unfortunately, today Tory found 2 large holes in the bottom of her 200 gallon, 60 pound canoe, and she's afraid she won't be able to row for the day. Assuming the two holes in the canoe are approximately 2 inches in diameter, and Tory weighs 75 pounds, how long will Tory be able to row before she has to utilize her safety whistle and flotation device?

Tory is paddling in fresh water, and her force is distributed equally between the two holes.

You know, just a run-of-the-mill math question for a 3rd grader...

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Re:There’s no place like home for math education by pbhjpbhj on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @01:53PM (#2411950)

>200 gallon, 60 pound

Is it 4 score hogshead moons per gross of firkin?

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Re:There’s no place like home for math education by evilduck on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @02:12PM (#2412037)

You jest, but unit measurement differences are very similar to radix differences. Being able to think in multiple units/bases is a useful skill.

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Re:There’s no place like home for math education by kragen on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @09:36PM (#2413552)

    kragen@inexorable:~$ units
    2411 units, 71 prefixes, 33 nonlinear units

    You have: 4 score hogshead moons per gross of firkin
    Unknown unit 'moons'
    You have:

Were you thinking lunar months, moon masses, moon radii, moon apogee...?

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Re:There’s no place like home for math education by pbhjpbhj on Wednesday April 06, 2011 @06:58AM (#2414603)

I was thinking "moons" as a period of time, so a lunar month : [time][volume]/[volume]

As in "We'll see 3 more moons before yon mountain dons his snowy cape." or some such yokel-ese.

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Re:There’s no place like home for math education by kragen on Wednesday April 06, 2011 @05:39PM (#2417097)

Well, fourscore hogshead per gross of firkin is 3.8̄ (i.e. 35/9), so fourscore hogshead-moons per gross of firkin is about 115 days.

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Re:There’s no place like home for math education by pbhjpbhj on Thursday April 07, 2011 @08:59AM (#2419268)

It was intended as a witty remark, I only parsed for unitary conformance not for value and didn't bother to answer the question.

Perhaps you'd like to do it and provide the answer in these units?

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Re:There’s no place like home for math education by droz on Tuesday April 05, 2011 @01:08PM (#2411738)

the answer is trivial and is left as an exercise to the reader.

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